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Love and War

Roots:Alien. The Cyberpunk genre. The Doctor alludes to Puff the Magic Dragon. There are references to Top of the Pops, The Wizard of Oz, Pride and Prejudice. One of Benny's archaeology team is Paul Magrs, who would later become a Doctor Who writer. The fictional Magrs says "I was born to deconstruct", which is very apt given the nature of his Who fiction.

Goofs: How does the skeleton of the heavenite stay together when all its flesh has decayed? Surely gravity would make the skeleton fall to the ground.

Dialogue Disasters: The Doctor: 'Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.'

The Doctor: 'I'm what monsters have nightmares about!'

Christopher: 'Do you think he is acting strangely?'
Benny: 'Not at all. Just very badly.'

Benny: 'What's the Time?'
The Doctor: 'The relative measurement of states of decay.'

Continuity: When Ace was 15, still at school, and known as Ace, she had an older friend called Julian who had a car (actually an Allegro). She met him in a pub. One morning, he turned up outside the school & threw his L-plates at Ace. That day, they drove to Lincoln. On the way back, they investigated a road that went nowhere. It turned out to lead to a prison. She only saw him once after that. He also only had one more car before he died, two years later. Ace thought of him as an older brother. She kissed him once, outside her house. It started as a brotherly peck and turned into a full-blown snog. She has a tape of Golden Green in the TARDIS. Julian had a telescope in his back garden and one evening, Ace looked through it and saw Saturn.

She once went to Glastonbury, and, while she was chatting to one traveller, another tried to steal her coat. She bust his nose, and the gang had to drag her away from a gathering knot of travellers. In Puterspace, Jan summarises Ace's sense of identity as "Ace, Dorothy. Warrior chemist, Dalek killer, she who loved not wisely but well. The woman who never ran away, never betrayed anyone, never deserted a friend. She has sacrificed herself, stood up and shouted out against the world."

Ace likes a lot of her problems. She had always had Midge chasing her. Her lot used to hang about by the swings or run down the narrow walkways between the factories. When the timestorm took her to Svartos (Dragonfire), she had been preparing for a week away with Julian, so she had a sackful of clothes. It took her 2 weeks & tons of peer pressure to learn to use a yo-yo. She still has one in her backpack, which she'd always meant to get rid of and she swaps it for a Hoothi spore. She read The Bell Jar when she was 14. It's implied that her Dad's called Jack and travels a lot. This could refer to a step dad or something as well. In his absence, Audrey had a string of male "friends" which kept her away from Ace. Audrey grew up without a dad. Ace was named after Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and never met her maternal grandmother (until The Curse of Fenric) [In Ace of Hearts (Short Trips), she kind of meets her whilst a baby].

Ace's schoolday exploits included smashing a boy's head across the desk because she thought he made a face at her, setting fire to the curtains in the main school hall, and putting laxatives in the head's tea. She's not experienced a lift-off before. She has at least 10 deca-credits on her. She always said that she'd never get engaged. She's already done most of the things she said she'd never do. She still has dreams about the Nazi she killed in Timewyrm: Exodus.

At the time of Julian's funeral, Chad Boyle (Timewyrm: Revelation) sent everyone Christmas cards after years of silence and Shreela had got a job on his newspaper. Julian was later absorbed by the Hoothi. Out of Midge, Jules, and Manisha, two are dead and one injured.

Ace reckons the Doctor is 783 give or take a day. He once told her that the first law of time was a moral one as well as a legal one, but she reckons that he breaks it all the time by stage-managing his battles with monsters. At the start he's still her best friend. He has 3 smiles: his cartoon grin, his secret freak-the-enemy-smile and his halfway smile, which makes Ace nervous. He has a Perigosto Stick, a thin silver probe with a tiny sphere on top and a tesseract (the shadow of a 4-D hypercube) in his pocket. In Ace's dream, he sacrificed his 6th life (the colourful jester), claiming it was for wisdom. Death claims that it was because he (the seventh Doctor) needed to be born. Time would have her champion, and the 6th Doctor hates the 7th Doctor for running the TARDIS into the Rani's beam. This reaction will result in the Valeyard. Death and Time are said to be Eternals (Enlightenment).

The Doctor says that he can only understand speech because words on paper don't have minds you can read. When Benny asks if the TARDIS has a bathroom, the Doctor tells her that it's "first left after the zoo."

In Planet of the Spiders, it took 10 years of slow decomposition in the Doctor whilst the TARDIS returned to Earth. At the Doctor's second trial, someone covertly took a mindscan of him. A copy was taken by an unscrupulous Time Lord. He read it and was later absorbed by the Hoothi, who now know this information. The Doctor admits to Benny that he has a model train set somewhere (c.f. Model Train Set (Short Trips) and Vampire Science). He tells her that he likes chaos, big explosions, and rebellions, and that he could have changed the TARDIS exterior ages ago. He has a portable chess set in his pocket. He claims to have 'lived a long time. Twice.' He can read Benny's mind by touching her forehead with his finger. [The TARDIS has stuff inside that can create protoplasm bubbles that allow humans (and Time Lords) to breathe in a Hoothi Sphere.] The Doctor could tell that Jan was infected by the Hoothi from his retinal pattern.

Heaven was discovered and named by Shirankha Hall when his deep-space incursion fleet was fleeing from a Draconian fleet. After the Dragon Wars ended, he mentioned it to the Draconian Ambassador Ishkavaarr, who proposed to Earth's (female) president that they take joint possession, declare it an open world and bury their dead there. It has a 23 hour day. Humans brought owls here. There are chickens in the market. There's a small community of settlers with lots of people passing through. There would be tourism if it weren't for the wars. It has no fossil record. The Draconian settlements are nearer the equator as they don't like winter. According to the Puterspace records, all dead humans in space have, for the past 3 decades, been sent to Heaven for burial. The Heavenites learnt a thing or too about hyperspace technology from the Hoothi. They were a Hoothi slave race and given the technology to make their world a paradise for other races.

The Arch is shiny silver and 10 stories high. Underneath it is a room with a shattered globe roof, a telescope and a shackled skeleton. The shackles don't belong there. The, probably female, skeleton is something like a bear with an opposable thumb and was left-handed. The telescope's lenses are part of superstrings leading into hyperspace and see through the Hoothi sphere's defences.

The Library of forbidden texts isn't wanted on Earth. It contains The Papers of Felescar, an ancient text of Felescar Abbey, which is over a thousand years old. The librarian claims that it vanished a long time ago. It has a security code, which is typed into a keyboard. It contains The Bell Jar. The Papers of Felescar includes Rigellian recipes, a palimpest of poems, notes on Dalek design through the decades, a volume of Heavenite Poetry and a Gallifreyan translation by Castellan Lode, the greatest ever Gallifreyan literary historian. It is written in a dozen different languages. The Monks of Felsecar have taken it as their mission to preserve the most dangerous objects and information in the universe and they have been doing so for a quarter of a million years.

Professor Bernice Summerfield (Benny) has an Ellerycorp archaeology grant for her work on Heaven. She's 30 and her birthday was recently, probably the day before the book starts. She has short black hair. She likes alcohol. She can use a sword better than Jan. She says she specialises in the Early Space Age and Mars. She reads body language. She's only ever had 3 boyfriends. She has a team of at least 7 archaeologists. Her money runs out in 3 days, and she has a pass out on a Draconian spaceship. She asks the Doctor which is the best Isley Brothers song and he correctly replies This Old Heart of Mine. Surprise actually is her middle name.

Benny was born on the Earth colony Beta Capris. Her dad was a Spacefleet bigwig (see Return of the Living Dad) and her Catholic mum stayed at home with her till she was 7. War broke out with the Daleks, Beta Capris became tactically important and the Daleks broke through. Benny's mum grabbed her and her doll Rebecca and then ran to a shelter. He mum dropped the doll, shoved Benny in the shelter, before running back for the doll just as the Daleks started bombarding the city with plasma beams. She was caught in the first blast. Benny's dad disappeared during a scrap with the Daleks. It was rumoured that he'd run away. [see Return of the Living Dad for the real story].

Benny was then sent to a military academy, but wasn't very good at it because she was a bad shot. She's now got better. She doesn't like soldiers, guns, and all that business. At the academy she went AWOL. She hid in the woods and became a guru for the girls. She was betrayed by a boy, Simon, with whom she fell in love. She was made the youngest private in the corps and was put on a troopship bound for Capella. She jumped ship in an escape pod. She arrived on a colony halfway to nowhere, started to work with an archaeological unit and faked her qualifications. Ace is the first person she told about that, and she is very touchy about the fact. She has a thing about people being locked up. She puts sticky notes over entries in her diary, and once fancied a friend called Ian who saw her as a sister. She plays chess, having a style that changes from childish to thoughtful.

In the 26th Century, they still use sleeping bags, tents, and beanbags. The 26th century swear word "cruk" is used for the first time in this book.

One of Johnny Chess' songs is called Baby, The Rain Must Fall.

Draconians (Frontier in Space) are quite civilised, except that they don't think females can think. They call the Doctor Karshtakavaar: the oncoming storm and know that he appears only when there's terrible danger. They venerate their ancestors.

The Travellers speak Palare. The Convoy was a combination of anarchists, society drop-outs and traditional travellers in the 20th century. They were pagans. When humans first expanded into space, a traveller called Fox stole a spaceship in dock and took it as far into hyperspace as it would go. They landed on Acturus 6 and busked for their supper, being the first contact. Travellers continued living on the frontiers. This one closed and Heaven is on the edge. There are 30 Travellers on Heaven, including 6 kids. They've been on Heaven for about a year and made the big white horse carved into the countryside. They all have jackplugs in their necks, allowing their brains to access Puterspace via a Puterspace deck. They have abandoned drugs as a way to obtain higher states of consciousness in favour of Puterspace. A beginner's terminal uses a thin wire headpiece in place of a jack.

Máire was a Dalek Killer (DK). She planted some bombs in support of those on the Lunar Penal Colony. She survived on a Dalek world for 3 months until a traveller ship miscalculated its hyperspace calculations and crash-landed there. She helped repair their engines in return for escape. She has 3 Dalek eyestalks (which are worth 20 decacredits in bounty at an imperial base). She also has a Dalek gunstick. She's the travellers' priestess, responsible for making sure that what everyone says makes a difference.

Jan Rydd once stole a golden goblet from the Church of the Vacuum, having been horrified by the ceremonies he saw performed there. He cleaned out the blood and cleansed it. Jan was once involved in some military experiments with Christopher. He gained pyrokinetic abilities and very long hair. He can put people to sleep. Christopher was rendered sexless in the military experiment and gained extensive mental powers. Alexander took his share of the pills plus half of Jan's share. He was the Travellers' High Priest, responsible for making sure everyone is heard. After his death he was able to animate his body from Puterspace. Rosia is equivalent to Jan's girlfriend. She was in love with Christopher when the experiment happened. She's decided to stay on Heaven. She can put people to sleep. Jan's book collection includes some Byron.

The Vacuum Church believes that the universe is meaningless and its members embrace death as an escape from pain. Some devotees allow themselves to be sacrificed for the cause. The church donates generously to the Imperial budget. The Church on Heaven has been controlled by the Hoothi for some time.

Puterspace is a virtual reality formed on the communications net between all the computers on Heaven or in its orbit. The data is easier to get to by wandering about in it, so hackers are biologically linked to the matrix via their jackholes. The travellers created their own area within Puterspace. The Daleks can get into Puterspace, but their hackers are still vulnerable as they aren't very good at it yet. There are computer viruses that can destroy a projection of a person into Puterspace and kill their body in the real world. The Rutan developed a computer program that takes the worst memories of any person in Puterspace and turn the matrix around them into a representation of that memory. It is possible to construct a safety line within the program. The Vacuum Church has a copy of this program.

The Hoothi recognise Time Lords - millions of years ago, whilst the Earth was still forming, Gallifrey had dealings with these master-strategists. At the time, the Hoothi farmed worlds and kept sentient populations as herd animals. The Time Lords still had interests of their own, planets where their influence was felt when the Hoothi took sides in a war on Tranmetgura. The Time Lords had been negotiating to get a planetary government they could deal with. The Hoothi introduced dead soldiers (animated corpses) into the conflict, full scale war broke out, and the planetary population was reduced by two thirds. The Hoothi took the dead into their silent gas dirigibles. They infected the Time Lord ambassador who had been sent to stop them interfering in Time Lord affairs. The Hoothi were then defeated, because Time Lord biochemistry was more advanced. However, they fled the Milky Way before they could be timelooped.

The Hoothi have also heard of the Doctor. They have been planning for 1 million years. Their filaments have something similar to the Time Lord symbiotic nuclei that enables regeneration. They can control vast amounts of energy. Their fibres can burn through matter and interface with living cells. No-one knows their origins, but they're fungoid and live off decayed matter. They have a group mind. Their psychic powers provided their dirigibles with stealth abilities. These dirigibles are inflated by explosive gases which are deadly to humans. Each one contains a group consciousness of four Hoothi plus slaves. This group consciousness is part of the greater Hoothi consciousness. The spheres are the size of a small moon and made of animal remains. The Hoothi seem to need large neural systems in spore-controlled life forms in order for their control to work well.

The Time Lords have a game where you manoeuvre objects across the dimensions. The loser lets it drop back into normal space. Prydonians played it with spheres of pure platinum, but the Doctor preferred rotten fruit.

Benny's Birthday

There is a lot of disagreement in the novels about precisely when Benny's native time is. This story is not explicitly dated, though it must take place after Frontier in Space (dated 2540). This makes Benny from the 26th Century, as acknowledged in almost all her appearances. However, early on, several writers initially thought she was from the 25th Century - one of the chapters in Love and War is called "Twenty-Fifth-Century Boy".

Transit says that Benny is from the 26th Century (page 186). The Highest Science says that the 27th Century (page 33) is 230 years ahead of Benny's time (page 35). The mid 25th Century is said to be 30 years before her time on page 40, and she seems surprised that Urnst had a revival in 2503 on page 47. In The Pit, Love and War is dated to 2450.

Eventually, of course, they decided to say that there were two different calendars in Benny's era, and that Benny could legitimately claim to be from both the 25th and 26th Centuries.

Links: Ace asks the travellers if they know any Johnny Chess. She thinks that Jan is the most beautiful man she's met this side of Kirith (Timewyrm: Apocalypse), and mentions Dalek time travel (Remembrance of the Daleks). Máire and Rosia briefly mention dead Dalek Killer Absalom Daak from Doctor Who Magazine, and Máire is, herself, a Dalek Killer. She says that DK agents don't die, but are exterminated. An icon in Puterspace leads to IMC (Colony in Space). Perigosto Sticks were first mentioned in The Green Death. The eternals were first seen in Enlightenment. Miller suspects the Sontarans (first seen in The Time Warrior). The Doctor mentions that Dodo keeps getting lost and refers to leaving Susan (The Dalek Invasion of Earth), and also mentions Rassilon (first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin), and having battled in the Matrix (The Deadly Assassin again. Ace says that it would make a change to have an adventure in her own body (Timewyrm: Revelation). The Trickster calls the Doctor Merlin (Battlefield). The Doctor mentions Susan's departure (The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and Ace mentions her time trapped on Iceworld as a waitress as well as Sabalom Glitz (Dragonfire), and the Doctor's waiting game in The Curse of Fenric. The Hoothi are briefly mentioned in The Brain of Morbius. One of the bodies animated by the Hoothi is a Terileptil (The Visitation).

Location: Heaven, a planet on the Earth/Draconia border. Some time after Frontier in Space.

Future History: Humans have Peggcorp swift-response fighters, which are [among the forces used to] locate a missing Dalek fleet which disappeared during the battle of Alpha Centurai. Elsewhere, the Dalek war still rages, though Earth itself is not threatened. Earth awards the full Sword and Colours to worthy soldiers. During the battle of Alpha Centurai a small fleet of Earth Reptile vessels saw off the main Dalek force. Rumours persist that a whole fleet vanished into hyperspace during that engagement. Earth is in the middle of decades of war, mostly with the Daleks, and the front changes continually. Every [human] planet has an orbital platform to allow cargo drops without planetfall. Taking a shuttle up there can allow a scanner sweep, revealing anything unusual and data that's potentially useful commercially. The Bell Jar has been banned for decades. There's been some contact between humans and Sontarans, though the Sontarans are believed to be busy in the Magellenic Cloud.

Unrecorded Adventures: The TARDIS has been behaving erratically lately, its configuration changing randomly and annoyingly. Ace learnt to ride in Adelaide in 1967 from a man called Medge. It's been months since Nightshade. A future Doctor [Muldwych from Birthright/Merlin from Battlefield] attached a post-it note to the Papers of Felsecar, telling humans what it was called when it arrived in human space. He wrote a felt tip note in Draconian on the Gallifreyan/Heavenite translation.

In addition to saying that he was great friends with Christopher Marlowe (c.f. The Empire of Glass), the Doctor was there when Shakespeare composed a mixed metaphor in Hamlet [c.f. City of Death]. He claims to spend most of his time, when not dealing with life and liberty, correcting idiots who misquote Shakespeare. The third Doctor spent ten years dying in the TARDIS whilst travelling back to Earth at the end of Planet of the Spiders.

The Bottom Line: 'I forget that not everybody thinks like a soldier.' Love and War fully deserves its status as a classic Who novel, and, like Timewyrm: Revelation, it lays the foundations for a lot of later New Adventures. The plot is well thought-out, Benny is already the character novel fans have come to know and love almost as much as the Doctor, and the relationship between Ace and Jan is handled perfectly, the final departure of Ace is both effective and moving. And that's before we come to the Hoothi, who are a truly terrifying enemy.

Discontinuity Guide by Stephen Gray

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